Casino is doing something right with this dark French
chocolate bar. They're delivering an intensely dark bar
without it being overly bitter and softening it with the
addition of a few split almonds.
Making them split almonds and writing French text on the front and back wrapper makes any foodie who was once obsessed with Grey Goose's French pedigree succumb.

Avg
price/gram: USD 0.022

Cocoa %: 85

Size: 100g

Could it be because Casino is
from France, the nation most closely associated with
epicureans, that their food products take on a luxury air?
Casino goes all out on this one, part of their Delices
range. They're offering a dark, dark chocolate, at 85%
cocoa solids, with cacao sourced from Tanzania, and filled
with 10% split almonds, an ambitious undertaking
indeed.

Green & Black's and
Carrefour did
quite acceptable jobs with their 80%+ bars. The reason you
don't see many 80%+ bars on the shelves, especially among
mainstream producers, is that they're not easy to pull off.
The darker the chocolate, the more important the cacao
that's been sourced and the manufacturer's chocolate
producing techniques in dealing with the higher expected
bitterness. Here's a analogy that could better explain
it. T

he quality and freshness of
fish stands is more evident when that fish is eaten
as sashimi. Served as a fried fish filet sandwich at
McDonald's and drenched in cheese, it's not so easy to
discern -- or all that important -- what grade dish you're
eating.

Green & Black's makes a
better 85% bar than Casino, but bear in mind that Green &
Black's is a specialty chocolate producer. Casino is
not. Were Michael Jordan to golf against Tiger Woods,
we would expect golf pro Woods to win. If Woods only
won by a small margin, we'd probably be more impressed with
Jordan.

Casino is doing something
right with this dark French chocolate bar. They're
delivering an intensely dark bar without it being overly
bitter and softening it with the addition of a few split
almonds. I've noticed that fillings in Casino bars
aren't gimmicks. The fillings are added in small
percentages to better balance the bar and make it more
palatable to a wider market. Certainly, my wife would
qualify in that wider market. She wouldn't bite into an 85%
bar unless it had something like almonds in it. Making
them split almonds and writing French
text on the front and back wrapper makes any foodie who was
once obsessed with Grey Goose's French pedigree succumb.

And at these
low prices, even Ritter Sport addicts can finally give up
their addiction and have a real shot at being gourmets.